Kill the fighter

[Henry]

To me, without classes and levels as every previous edition has had, there is no D&D. Without some kind of "Vancian" style magic as every edition has had, there is no D&D. And finally, without a fighter-type, rogue-type, wizard-type, and cleric-type, as every edition has had, there is no D&D.

Hit points and armor class, I might could waffle on, but they're liable to be represented too, for much the same reason. I agree with the sentiment that I'd rather see one very versatile fighter class than a plethora of subclasses that are difficult to cross-train to different styles.

 

[Yora]

Fighter happens to be the third popular D&D class. After wizard and rogue. People love fighters. When there's time to get rid of something, then it's new classes for specific fighter builds. No samurai, warlord, knight, marshal, and so on.

 

[Klaus]

Fighter happens to be the third popular D&D class. After wizard and rogue. People love fighters. When there's time to get rid of something, then it's new classes for specific fighter builds. No samurai, warlord, knight, marshal, and so on.

If by "third" you mean "first", then you're right. The most popular D&D character is "human fighter".

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's why there's a generic fighter class, so that all Fighter archetypes can be modeled...not just niche versions.

So, should we go back to a generic "magic-user" class and make warlocks, sorcerers, illusionists, necromancers, maybe clerics, all part of that?

Or, why distinguish fighters from magic-users in this inherently magical world? Why not make one "adventurer" class that can, through options, model many different archetypes, from gishes to knights to scholar-wizards to illusionst-rogues?

I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" answer per se, but I do think it's a question of how class-based you want to be. One generic "fighter" as its own class can imply a whole lot of classes that should probably be more generic than they are as of 3e/4e (which, you could argue, is part of why 3e and 4e have class bloat: classes are generally not as generic).

You could maybe try a middle ground. Start really generic and broad, and just have "packages" that come pre-made as classes, with people who want to dig into the detail a bit able to customize. That might be really hard to pull off in a balanced way, though.

 

[Minigiant]

The fighter doesn't need to be removed. It needs to be protected.

Whatever we decide to make the fighter good at, it must be the BEST at and make it viable in all combats (as it is a combat class).

If fighters are the Damage class, give it the highest damage and make damage dealing a good option.
If fighters are the Weapon Accuracy class, give it the highest accuracy and weapon attacks a strong choice.
If fighters are the Armor Class class, give it the highest AC and make AC tanks viable at all levels.
If fighters are the Hit Point class, give it the highest HP and make HP tanks viable at all levels.

 

[GreyICE]

Previous edition encouraged specialization (or in the case of 4E made it the only way to play). So of course classes who can do one thing really well like barbarian or ranger overshadowed the fighter whos flavor was more along the lines of "master of all weapons". But what use is it when you only ever use a single type of weapon?
So in 4E WotC decided to add anime magic to the fighter.

To make the fighter in 5E viable you either have to continue with anime nonsense or make profiency with multiple weapon types more rewarding.
Or they could rename the fighter to soldier and make it sword&shield only, leaving 2 handed weapons to paladins and barbarians and archery to the ranger. Imo a really boring solution.

It's actually funny how some people who don't play 4E think that all the classes fall into neat little slots because they read a line named 'role.'

Fighters were Defenders, sure. And damage dealing machines. Depending on the build they ranged from 'one of the more dangerous defenders' to 'striker level damage.' Fighters hurt things. Badly.

Paladins, the other PHB Defender, do significantly less damage. Strength-based Paladins can do solid damage, while Charisma-based gave it up for a lot of control.

As for being 'anime-based' I don't think you quite know what you're talking about there. 'Mythical' is more correct - WotC drew heavily on Western legends. Cu Chulainn, Hercules, etc.

 

[Yora]

If by "third" you mean "first", then you're right. The most popular D&D character is "human fighter".

No, by third I mean third. The question is not about a race and class combination, but about a class.

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

 

[tlantl]

One of the things I liked about the first unearthed arcana was the cavalier's retainers. I had a cavalier once who reached 12th level in AD&D. I had a small handfull of retainers I got to play as well as the cavalier. This was a fun challenge for me as I had a small unit of troops to use.

Maybe if the player who uses a fighter had the chance to use two or three characters as a unit the problem of player boredom with fighters could change. they would have more to do in different situations and more things to worry about.

I know it'll be a little out there but it could be fun to try.

 

[n00bdragon]

If fighters are the Damage class, give it the highest damage and make damage dealing a good option.
If fighters are the Weapon Accuracy class, give it the highest accuracy and weapon attacks a strong choice.
If fighters are the Armor Class class, give it the highest AC and make AC tanks viable at all levels.
If fighters are the Hit Point class, give it the highest HP and make HP tanks viable at all levels.

The problem is that even if the fighter is all of these he's still the most useless class in the game because he can't DO anything besides hit stuff with a hunk of metal. He can't move obstacles out of the way, he can't talk his way around a fancy dress party, he can't stop a demon from carrying a princess back through a hellish portal.

Giving the fighter more plus signs isn't the answer. He needs effect buttons, he needs something on his character sheet that allows him to tell the DM "now this happens" instead of begging for the DM to come up with rules for him to swing from chandeliers on the spot.

 

[jbear]

Here is a good question for Next: Why should we keep the Fighter class?

It sounds radical on the face of it, but really, it is the logical thing to do.

Let's look at all the Fighter-like classes we already have. Barbarians: they fight by raging and taking inhuman amounts of damage. Paladins: they fight by marshaling their innate virtue and holy power to smite bad guys. Rangers: they fight using their unique combat styles, drawing on their wilderness skills. Monk: they fight using their fists, their ki, and their supernatural self-perfection.

But they aren't the only Fighter-like classes. Rogues: they fight by sneaking around behind the enemy and stabbing them where it hurts most. Wizards: they fight with a wide variety of spells drawn from their knowledge of arcana. Clerics: they fight with a mix of martial skill and divinely-granted magics. Druids: they fight using the power of nature and summoned creatures. Bards: they fight by singing and annoying hostile audiences to death. (Well, not really.)

When it comes down to it, every single class is a Fighter of some flavor or another.

So here is my suggestion: Remove the generic version of the Fighter, and in its place adopt a few more Fighter-like martial classes to fill the niches that the generic Fighter could fill better than the other Fighter-like classes could. A class that relies on heavy armor and heavy shields, or one that fights on horseback like a Cavalier, etc.

What I came to say has already been said, but just to emphasise what a bad idea it would be to remove 'fighter' as a class I'll repeat it any way.

The fighter is the most popular class in the game according to several polls run here at EnWorld.

With 4e the Fighter actually became possibly the most effective class in the game. This could probably be argued, but I doubt many people would argue that the fighter isn't right up their at the cusp of classes in 4e.

If you think of D&D from its origins ... the fighter is part of that unquestionably.

There is just NO WAY in hell that the designers are going to leave the Fighter class out of the game. It is the epitome of a mercenary/soldier style of fighting that is neither a barbarian, a ranger or a monk.

They are designing the game to be inclusive. If the are going to exclude anything, it's certainly not going to be something which has been at the heart of the game since the start and remained so throughout its history.

Just stop and think for a moment the backlash of nerdrage it would provoke if they even mentioned they were considering an idea like this.

Definitively BAD idea.